Obama’s bosom buddies over in Israel, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip have what they call a two party system.

One party is Hamas,

Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them, and the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslims, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” – except for the gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. [...]

2nd boy: The Zionist aggression continues its attacks on Gaza with warplanes. This war will never be over. It will continue until the day comes when the stones and the trees say: “Oh Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” [...]

and the other is the “moderate” party, Fatah

“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said in his keynote at Fatah’s sixth General Assembly.

Abbas’ remarks came as the Palestinian economy in the West Bank has improved substantially in the last two years, thanks to Israel’s efforts to grow the Palestinian market and provide greater freedom of movement by reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints.

During the conference, Fatah officials discussed a possible strategic alliance with Iran, which continues to defy the international community’s demands that it halt its nuclear program. Iran is also the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in training, arms and financing to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes, moderate.

Abbas and the Fatah charter demand the release of thousands of Fatah prisoners who are in Israel prisons. Many of these prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti, have been convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians. At the conference, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Fatah operative and aide to Abbas, said there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.

…convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians…..

there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.

Of course, there’s also this, so what can I say?

My name is Chuck. Wolf and I go back to the early-mid 1970s and some time together in hell, which is about all I’ll say on that note, and Seth and I have been friends, having met through Wolf, for about 6 months.

I was asked recently to try and find some time to contribute to this august blog, and since then, Seth began going through some kind of weird depression thing that started on his birthday last week. I haven’t seen him since the day after, when he visited me briefly on the boat I call home. Whatever it is, I hope to hell he comes out of it, as it seems serious enough that I am concerned. Wolf is presently out of the country and Seth is not responsive to overtures to talk about the basis for his angst, so the best I can do at present is pray that he resolves things on his own.

So let’s get on with this.

While I’m not Jewish, I am an advocate of strong U.S./Israeli relations, favoring the Jewish State as a major U.S. ally.

Israel has been getting the proverbial shit end of the stick on behalf of the U.N., the U.S. and Europe in the course of Arab-favoring “peace initiatives” for decades, but never before has an American president been so transparently anti-Israel in his remarks, policies and attitude…Prior to the administration of Barack Hussein Obama, a man who for twenty years attended a church presided over by Reverend Wright a blatant, terrorist-loving anti-Jewish, race-baiting piece of gutter trash.

Do you get the impression that I don’t approve all that much of Obama’s religious mentor?

Obama’s recent speech in Egypt was pretty well indicative of where this POTUS stands on the Israel/Palestinian issue, as Road 90 describes it.

On June 4, 2009, President Barack H. Obama delivered a speech in Cairo, Egypt, that contained a distorted view of the Jewish people’s historical ties to the land of their forefathers, the land of Israel.

I recommend watching the entire video linked here, and taking a gander at a few of the comments below it.

All in all, I believe it tells the whole story.

…life of late has been a bit crowded where time is concerned. I’ve been dividing my time between a work project and a commitment I made to help someone out in the maintenance of his own business (no compensation to speak of, more in the nature of a favor), and it hasn’t left me much time to post. I manage to make my rounds in the blogosphere, but only have limited time to comment. This will shortly change — I’m beginning to think I was born with a shoestring schedule or the like, considering that I’m trying really hard to be semi-retired.

I commented recently to a friend, while we were listening to Katrina & The Waves’ Going Down To Liverpool (to do nothing) that I had come to Chicago to do precisely that, only it hasn’t yet worked out as such.

That said, I took some time out earlier to watch a DVD of Live Free Or Die Hard, and must say that I found it profoundly entertaining. The Die Hard series is among the few whose sequels are worth watching, and a third one that qualifies thus is worth remarking upon.

Non-stop action (though the stunt scenes are a bit unbelievable when applied to “real life” probabilities), a plot based on something that I’m not entirely unsure couldn’t happen given the criminal minds that seem to migrate into the field of computer hacking and, as a welcome change, an F.B.I. deputy director who is portrayed by Hollywood as a competent, dedicated law enforcement official rather than the usual corrupt, criminal mastermind the left coast film liberals enjoy portraying.

Okay, having gotten that bit out of the way…

Anyone who visits this blog with any regularity knows how I feel about John McCain being the next President of the United States (Tancredo or Thompson, one of you guys get your ass back here, right now, or send Mitt!).

While I know where Ann and Rush are coming from — let Hillary preside over the coming four year disaster, so a Democrat will have been on watch — I’ve finally come to terms with the distasteful fact that I’ll have to pull the lever for the RINO — he’ll be the lesser of two evils in the general election, albeit not by much, though I won’t donate a dime to his campaign. Let Russ Feingold or La Raza make a donation in my name if it strikes their fancies.

As I said before, I despise the thought of having to choose between the measles or the mumps, but there it is…

But I didn’t come here to rehash things I’ve already posted. I came here to talk about one aspect of a McCain Presidency that actually gives the Arizona guy a checkbox in the positive column, at least for me, as a Jew: His stance on Israel.

Yesterday, I got into a debate with a new friend, one who is a kindred spirit from a political point of view rather than a shiftless liberal, over the concept of negotiating with Arabs. He firmly believes that as far back as the Golda Meir administration, Israel could have struck an equitable deal with Egypt and, as a result, the Arabs in general, in the way of establishing peace in the Middle East.

While his points were good from the usual optimistic humanist viewpoint, they were delivered from the perspective of western thinking — that everyone shares our outlook on life, reasonableness and can, as a result, be negotiated with. My own point that Muslims are 180 degrees different in that respect from us didn’t seem to register. What I couldn’t get across was that when you’ve “negotiated” agreements with an entity more than half a dozen times and while you honor your side of the deal every time while the other party ignores theirs, you have to realize, finally, that it’s pointless to enter into further negotiations.

Especially when each time, you make major life and death concessions that give the other side major strategic advantages that afford them ever increasing, indelible opportunities to destroy you, all your issue and all you stand for.

Elements of his side of the debate cited the massive proportion of Arabs to Israelis with the factors of Iran (he believes that Iran could beat Israel in a war, I believe that given a free hand to conduct such a war utilizing all their capabilities without politically motivated restriction, Israel could kick Ahmadmanjihad’s butt) and Hezbollah mandate negotiation in the interests of Israel’s survival.

How many times does Israel have to “negotiate” away land and release terrorists from prison before it sinks home that dealing with the Arabs is a one way street? When Israel is down to one square mile of sovereign territory, all incarcerated terrorists have been freed and “Palestinians” are hailing down rockets on that tiny, crowded acreage, will our leaders continue to press for “negotiations”?

But as usual, I digress.

Back on topic (have I actually been there yet, to begin with?), McCain’s statements regarding the Israeli-”Palestinian” situation are right on point. My debating “opponent” was right when he said that McCain is a true friend of Israel.

The success of Hamas and Hizbollah in the Middle East is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to US national interests, said John McCain, the US Republican presidential candidate.

“If Hamas/Hizbollah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn’t the only enemy,” Mr McCain said in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel.”

The American who will almost certainly be the next POTUS actually grasps the reality of the situation.

“I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States,” he said. “If you are partners, then you don’t dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be.”

If only our last several administrations had been bestowed with such clear insights into the Israeli-Arab situation…

…”catching up” posts.

First, there’s an excellent column by Caroline Glick on the ongoing western policy of appeasement in the face of what I personally prefer to term aggressive Islam.

MUSLIM MINORITIES throughout the world are being financed and ideologically trained in Saudi and UAE funded mosques and Islamic centers. These minorities act in strikingly similar manners in the countries where they are situated throughout the world. On the one hand, their local political leaders demand extraordinary communal rights, rights accorded neither to the national majority nor to other minority populations. On the other hand, Muslim neighborhoods, particularly in Europe, but also in Israel, the Philippines and Australia, are rendered increasingly ungovernable as arms of the state like the police and tax authorities come under attack when they attempt to assert state power in these Muslim communities.

Logic would have it that targeted states would respond to the threat to their authority through a dual strategy. On the one hand, they would firmly assert their authority by enforcing their laws against both individual lawbreakers and against subversive, foreign financed institutions that incite the overthrow of their governments and their replacement with Islamic governments. On the other hand, they would seek out and empower local Muslims who accept the authority and legitimacy of their states and their rule of law.

Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Howard government in Australia, in country after country, governments respond to this challenge by attempting to appease Muslim irredentists and their state sponsors. The British responded to the July 7, 2005 bombings by giving representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood an official role in crafting and carrying out counter-terror policies.

In 2003, then French president Jacques Chirac sent then interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy to Egypt to seek the permission of Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi of the Islamist al-Azhar mosque for the French parliament’s plan to outlaw hijabs in French schools.

In the US, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI asked the terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations to conduct sensitivity training for FBI agents.

In Holland last year, the Dutch government effectively expelled anti-Islamist politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the interest of currying favor with Holland’s restive Muslim minority.

At the minimum, I would say that sanity does not seem to prevail here; They are in the minority in all these countries, yet their demands are complied with post-haste, even to the point of exceeding accommodations accorded the majority in a respective host population.

This acquiescence is not restricted to laws of a social nature, on the contrary it has found its way into global politics.

THE FOREIGN policy aspect of the rush to appease is twofold. First, targeted states refuse to support one another when individual governments attempt to use the tools of law enforcement to handle their domestic jihad threat. For instance, European states have harshly criticized the US Patriot Act while the US criticized the French decision to prohibit the hijab in public schools.

More acutely, targeted states lead the charge in calling for the establishment of Muslim-only states. Today the US and the EU are leading the charge towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and the creation of an independent state of Kosovo.

In two weeks, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the Annapolis conference where together with her European and Arab counterparts, she will exert enormous pressure on the Olmert government to agree to the establishment of a jihadist Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland with its capital in Jerusalem and its sovereignty extending over Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount.

The establishment of the sought-for Palestinian state presupposes the ethnic cleansing of at a minimum 80,000 Israelis from their homes and communities simply because they are Jews. Jews of course will be prohibited from living in Palestine.

To continue,

FOR ITS part, the Palestinian leadership to which Israel will be expected to communicate its acceptance of the establishment of Palestine, is one part criminal, and two parts jihadist. As Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues have made clear, while they are willing to accept Israel’s concessions, they are not willing to accept Israel. This is why they refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

A rare consensus exists today in Israel. From the far-left to the far-right, from IDF Military Intelligence to the Mossad, all agree that the Annapolis conference will fail to bring a peace accord. Since Rice’s approach to reaching just such an accord has been to apply unrelenting pressure on Israel, it is fairly clear that she will blame Israel for the conference’s preordained failure and cause a further deterioration in US-Israeli relations.

While Israel is supposed to accept a Jew-free Palestine, it goes without saying that its own 20 percent Arab minority will continue to enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizenship. Yet one of the direct consequences of the establishment of a Jew-free, pro-jihadist State of Palestine will be the further radicalization of Israeli Arabs. They will intensify their current rejection of Israel’s national identity.

With Palestinian and outside support, they will intensify their irredentist activities and so exert an even more devastating attack on Israel’s sovereignty and right to national self-determination.

“Ma zeh?” {Hebrew for “what’s this?”} you may ask. Well, one answer is that it’s lackluster diplomacy — you know, just like what an employer might expect from a lazy employee of the “sweep under a rug” persuasion. The politicians and diplomats on the western side of the equation want only to put the Israeli-”Palestinian” affair to bed once and for all, the consequences of any expediency be damned, and as a bonus, giving Israel the fid will also fulfill the requisites of The New Dhimmitude©.

SHORTLY AFTER the Annapolis conference fails, and no doubt in a bid to buck up its standing with the Arab world, the US may well stand by its stated intention to recognize the independence of Kosovo.

Yeah, well,

As Julia Gorin

(Julia is profoundly well informed on affairs in the Balkans, and the bulk of her columns specialize therein)

documented in a recent article here, in Jewish World Review, Kosovo’s connections with Albanian criminal syndicates and global jihadists are legion. Moreover, Kosovar independence would likely spur irredentist movements among the Muslim minorities in all Balkan states. In Macedonia for instance, a quarter of the population is Muslim. These irredentist movements in turn would increase Muslim irredentism throughout Europe just as Palestinian statehood will foment an intensification of the Islamization of Israel’s Arab minority.

The Kosovo government announced last month that given the diplomatic impasse, it plans to declare its independence next month. Currently, the Bush administration is signaling its willingness to recognize an independent Kosovo even though doing so will threaten US-Russian relations.

In a bid both to prevent the Bush administration from turning on Israel in the aftermath of the failure of the Annapolis conference and to make clear Israel’s own rejection of the notion that a “solution” to the Palestinian conflict with Israel can be imposed by foreign powers, the Olmert government should immediately and loudly restate its opposition to the imposition of Kosovar independence on Serbia.

In the interest of defending the nation-state system, on which American sovereignty and foreign policy is based, the US should reassess the logic of its support for the establishment of Muslim-only states. It should similarly revisit its refusal to openly support the right of non-Islamic states like Israel, Serbia and even France, to assert their rights to defend their sovereignty, national security and national character from outside-sponsored domestic Islamic subversion.

There’s a lot more happening in Ms. Glick’s column, which can be read in its entirety here.

In my mind’s ear (if there can be a mind’s eye, there must surely also exist a mind’s ear) I keep hearing the phrase, “The creep of Islam”.

“Moving right along”…

This is really funny. Put down your coffee cup before you listen.

A car accident happened in the Dallas-Ft.Worth area.

This is a recorded phone call from a man who witnessed the accident involving four elderly women. It was so popular when they played it on the local radio station the station decided to put it on their website.

Next up, and while the following articles are several days old they are by no means historical,

Nearly two dozen illegal immigrants were arrested Wednesday, accused of using fake security badges to work in critical areas of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, including the tarmac, authorities said.

The 23 illegal workers were employed by Ideal Staffing Solutions Inc., whose corporate secretary and office manager also were arrested after an eight-month investigation that involved federal, state and Chicago authorities.

The company contracted work for carriers including UAL Corp.’s (UAUA) United Airlines, KLM and Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN.AU), said Elissa A. Brown, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

“The investigation identifies a vulnerability that could compromise national security, while bringing criminal charges against individuals who built an illegal work force into their business practice,” Brown said.

Read the entire article here.

As if that weren’t enough,

The Transportation Security Administration touts its programs to ensure security by using undercover operatives to test its airport screeners. In one instance, however, the agency thwarted such a test by alerting screeners across the country that it was under way, even providing descriptions of the undercover agents.

The government routinely runs covert tests at airports to ensure that security measures in place are sufficient to stop a terrorist from bringing something dangerous onto an airplane.
Alerting screeners when the undercover officer is coming through and what the person looks like would defeat the purpose.

But that’s exactly what happened April 28, 2006, according to an e-mail from a top TSA official who oversees security operations.

This one’s a real winner, read on…

On the one hand, we have airports hiring HR contractors who make a practice of endangering the lives of scores, hundreds or thousands of people and on the other, the government agency responsible for U.S. airport security is rigging security inspections to make it appear that they are doing their job.

No matter how much effort I put into it, I can’t find even the slightest hint of justification for the above two situations. Does this make me a bad person?

Some people definitely need to be punished to the fullest extent that the law allows, some people need to be replaced and some people need to be majorly retrained….

…This past week began with another one of those ambushes beginning in “…could you please…we really, really need…” and continuing along with a deadline-oriented project that consisted of writing a short but time-and-thought-consuming manual. To put things simply, whenever I freed up a little time to post, I was, to all intents and purposes, brain-dead.

So Friday, after Fed-Exing the finished product to the client, I determined to simply relax for a day (Saturday), get my head together, so to speak, watch a few DVDs and cook myself a humongous rib-eye from the best butcher shop in Chicago, accompanied by pasta with a jar-originated sauce — anyone who occasionally (or always) takes the shortcut of using pre-made pasta sauces might try Mezzetta’s Napa Valley Bistro brands, they make every other brand I’ve ever sampled pale to insignificance — that wasn’t a paid advertisement, it was a free endorsement from a devoted fan. A spinach salad with lots of grape tomatoes and Marie’s Creamy Italian Garlic dressing and about half a bottle of chiante classico rounded things out rather well…

I watched Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon (I am a major Humphrey Bogart fan, and especially enjoy the films he made with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet) a few Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts and Dean Martin Variety Show episodes and, conversely, a totally insane Rob Zombie gorefest called House Of 1,000 Corpses.

Having said all that, one of the most disconcerting, though not at all surprising in the Track Records Department bits of news I’ve read in the last few days was about Condoleeza Rice consulting with Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter in order to “benefit” from their Middle East Peace Talks experience.

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot!!!?

What is she thinking?

Both of those administrations were failures in the Israeli/”Palestinian” arena, accomplishing nothing save for increased violence with a backdrop of Israel making mounds of concessions while the “Palestinians” honored none of their side of any agreements made.

Adding to that, Carter’s proven himself quite the anti-Israel lobbyist over the last few years.

George W. Bush’s “Roadmap” secured the release of beaucoup terrorists from Israeli prisons and subsequently resulted in Israel ceding territory to the “Palestinians”, territory the Arabs began utilizing, right off the bat, as launching platforms for terrorist attacks against Israel.

Every single “peace” accord in which we engage over there has identical results: Israel compromises more of her security and cedes more territory and the “Palestinians” gain additional one-way concessions.

Now Jerusalem has been thrown into the mix of diplomatic consideration.

Our (U.S.) involvement in the Israel-”Palestinian” relationship is a paradox: On one hand, we finance much of Israel’s self-defense capability via hundreds of millions of dollars, on the other hand we cripple Israel on the political/diplomatic stage.

Our diplomatic offerings over there are the epitome of profound idiocy.

Either we support Israel or we don’t.

I was a 100% supportive of Condi when she was first appointed. Her approach to the Israel/”Palestinian” millieu has changed my mind entirely.

We’re looking at a typical political appointee in a typical politics-first scenario: Support Israel with the right hand while allowing it to be gradually eroded and eventually destroyed by the left hand.

A column by Wesley Pruden (an icon of mine) gives a good example of those among my fellow Jews who have, unfortunately in large quantities, listed too far to port.

If at first you don’t succeed in making friends with a neighbor who’s forever dreaming of killing you, try again. If that doesn’t work, cry “mea culpa.” Then call your lawyer and make sure your will is up to date.

The notion that trusting your enemies against all evidence to the contrary is the most stubborn liberal pipe dream. If you wish upon a star hard enough, hold hands tight enough and sing kumbaya loud enough, dreams come true.

Right, as we once said, On!

Yosef Kanefsky, a prominent Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Los Angeles, detonated a fierce debate among Jews and their Christian allies here last week with his argument that maybe the insoluble, intractable standoff in the Middle East is the result of lies, or at least stretchers, told by Jews and evangelical Christians. And a few little white fibs told by misguided Muslims. A good place for repentance to start is to divide Jerusalem.

“The question of whether we could bear a redivision of Jerusalem is a searing and painful one,” he wrote in a provocative essay in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. “The Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel and a variety of other organizations, Christian Evangelical ones, are calling upon their constituencies to join them in urging the Israeli government to refrain from any negotiation concerning the status of Jerusalem at all, when and if the Annapolis [peace] conference occurs. …

“It’s not that I would want to see Jerusalem divided. It’s rather that the time has come for honesty. … [T]hese organizations are not being honest about the situation that we are in, and how it came about. And I cannot support them in this.”

Oh, yeah, as in almost every other venue in this cockamamie era, idiots are taking over. The rabbis who most figured into my much younger years were Boxer (deceased) and Spar, who Bar-Mitzva’d me. Both were conservatives, both religiously and politically.

Along came the liberals, introducing “reform” Judaism. Moral convenience over the laws set down in the Torah. Don’t stray too far while looking for comparable examples, just examine the Democrats here in the U.S. of A. Here, they simply do away with references to G-d altogeter and, in the same vein, treat the Constitution the way Reform Jews regard the Old Testament.

The fact that Kanefsky is an Orthodox Jew truly makes me wonder why he’s in the dhimmi camp rather than the Kahane camp.

Well, the rabbi, like the rest of us, at least in the West, is entitled. But it’s difficult to see how giving your enemies a “mea culpa” is a smart bargaining position when those enemies devoutly believe that with only a little more pressure you’ll cave. Rabbi Kanefsky goes further:

“No peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians will ever produce anything positive until both sides have decided to read the story of the last 40 years honestly. On our side, this means being honest about the story of how Israel came to settle civilians in the territories it conquered in 1967, and about the outcomes that this story has generated.”

This is the well-meant goodwill gesture that Israel’s enemies will take for an admission that the Palestinian radicals were right all along, that the Jews are as perfidious as the Islamic radicals have been saying they are, and their Crusader allies are just as bad. Conceding half of Jerusalem for nothing in return would further embolden the Palestinians to scorn the half-loaf when they can soon get the bakery

Nevertheless, the rabbi’s remarks are taken very seriously indeed. Several of his rabbinical colleagues praised his “bravery” and “courage,” though it’s not clear what bravery and courage have to do with anything, since rabbis, like Christian pastors, generally do not fear the beheadings, firebombings and similar tools of doctrinal suppression often employed in certain other places.

Mid-East (Israel, “Palestinian”) peace is a major political focus of every U.S. Government administration, be it Democrat or Republican.

Realistically, we should simply step aside and allow the Israelis and the Arabs to settle their differences. Every time we get involved, we kill more Israelis.

It’s not that our politicians and diplomats are ill intentioned, it’s just that they’re either naive, stupid or a combination of the two. Sort of like Rabbi Kanefsky.

I would really like to see Condi stand toe-to-toe with Abbas and say in level tones, “You folks never honor the obligations you assume in the course of these peace accords, yet you screech the second you don’t think Israel has honored theirs to the fullest extent to which you can milk them. You are not an honorable people. Until you have proven otherwise and civilized yourselves in the process, you will not receive a dime of U.S. largesse.”

Instead, she (and by extension, the administration) prefers to show us how lost she is on that front by consulting the architects of previous failure.

We are supposedly Israel’s friend — with a friend like us, who needs enemies?

…continue to inflict their Islam on one another.

Hundreds of Hamas fighters firing rockets and mortar shells captured the headquarters of the Fatah-allied security forces in northern Gaza on Tuesday, scoring a key victory in the bloody battle for control of the seaside strip.

Both sides said Gaza had descended into civil war, as the death toll from two days of Palestinian fighting reached 37.

Tuesday’s battles marked a turning point, with Hamas moving systematically to seize Fatah positions in what some in the Islamic militant group said would be a decisive phase in the yearlong power struggle. The confrontations became increasingly brutal in recent days, with some killed execution-style in the streets, others in hospital shootouts or thrown off rooftops.

And liberals believe that these evil murderous creatures are capable of maintaining a civilized sovereign state?

Battles raged across the Gaza Strip during the day. The staccato of gunfire echoed across Gaza City, plumes of smoke rose into the air from far-flung neighborhoods and one firefight sent a dozen preschoolers scrambling for cover.

Truncating,

Many Gazans, pinned down in their homes, were furious with the combatants. “Both Fatah and Hamas are leading us to death and destruction,” said Ayya Khalil, 29, whose husband serves as an intelligence officer. “They don’t care about us.”

They are such a stupid people. They supported Arafat and Fatah for decades and, knowing full well that Hamas is a terrorist organization, voted them into political leadership, and now that their chickens are coming home to roost, they are whining. Whine, terrorist supporters, whine! They’ve proven repeatedly, for over half a century, that they are incapable of learning from their mistakes, so by all means let them fall back to their default position (whining).

There was concern the fighting might spread to the West Bank, where Fatah has the upper hand, as Hamas notched victories in Gaza. Late Tuesday, Fatah gunmen wounded four Hamas activists in the West Bank city of Nablus, Fatah said in a statement.

Good, let’s leave them alone, and let them kill each other off wherever and whenever they can.

Here is one idea I think needs to be forgotten about immediately.

Senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip have asked Israel to allow them to receive large shipments of arms and ammunition from Arab countries, including Egypt.

The group says it needs the weapons to counter attacks by Hamas, which has an overwhelming advantage in the Gaza Strip.

You mean, allow Palestinians to receive an arsenal and armored mobility?

Israel has not officially responded to the request, which includes dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons.

For Palestinians, right?

Under certain circumstances, Israel may allow the transfer of armored vehicles, since they are not considered a threat to its security. In the past, during the Oslo Accords, Israel allowed then-Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat to receive a number of outdated armored vehicles.

When the second intifada began, the armored vehicles were destroyed in air strikes.

On the other hand, Israel is unlikely to allow rockets to enter Gaza, since they may fall into the hands of Hamas and be used against Israeli forces.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as saying during a closed meeting on Wednesday that he is “very frustrated by the fact that Israel is not permitting the transfer of arms and ammunition for his men.”

“The legal organs of the Palestinian Authority have become weaker than the militias due to the lack of equipment,” Abbas added.

Israeli intelligence officials are not unanimous in their assessments of
Fatah’s and Hamas’ strength in Gaza. Most Shin Bet experts and officers in charge of activity in the territories believe that Fatah is on the verge of collapse in the strip ¬and that a future confrontation with Hamas may bring about its final defeat. They argue that there is no point in supporting Fatah, because all the equipment the movement receives will eventually fall into Hamas’ hands.

On the other hand, Military Intelligence and other intelligence experts believe that Fatah is not close to surrendering, and that reinforcing the group with equipment from abroad should be considered seriously.

Wasn’t it Mahmoud Abbas who said not long ago that rather than Palestinians (Hamas and Fatah) fighting among themselves, they should all be turning their guns on Israeli Jews?

Giving guns to the Palestinians?

I’m all for allowing those animals to kill each other off, but I’m against supplying them with more ordinance than they already have. Let either side wipe out the other, then the IDF should take its queue and destroy the surviving faction, root and branch.

The last paragraph of the article drew a good laugh from me.

Also on Wednesday, Palestinian sources in Gaza said the military wing of Hamas has acquiesced to cease firing Qassam rockets at Israel, following intense pressure by the political leadership. Iz al-Din al-Qassam will continue launching attacks, but it will revert to using mortars.

ROTFLMAO!!!!

…unconditionally pro-Israel.

I grew up mostly in New York in a conservative Jewish family (in my maternal grandparents’ house) that included a number of still-living witnesses to the horrors of the Third Reich. My grandmother, who had grown up in Poland, described pogroms during her childhood. She lost her two brothers to the Gestapo. Some of my relatives emigrated to Palestine in the early 1940s. Their children still live there, and their childrens’ children.

During the first of my thus far twoish years of blogging, I posted a lot more than I have since on Israeli affairs. This, I suspect is my profound disappointment combined with a touch of despair over the fact that because of its present utterly spineless, inane, capitulatory liberal leadership, I might well see Israel cease to exist long before the end of my lifetime (I turn 52 in a couple of months). I sometimes start to post on Israel, then quit in disgust.

The Great Gaza Giveaway about did it — any friggin’ moron at the farthest corner of the planet had to know Hamas would use the ceded land for exactly what they have been using it for, and the leaders of the terrorist organization cum “political party” crowed loudly as to how terrorism had worked well against Israel, and would have to be increased until those leftist idiots have given away all of Israel and however many Jews that hadn’t been slaughtered had hightailed it out of the country in refugee mode.

Then came the war in Lebanon, when Ehud Olmert seemed determined both to rescue the Israeli soldiers and eliminate Hezbollah once and for all, and I thought, they’ve got their spine back, yay!

“Get those abducted soldiers back from the terrorists!” Oh, wait, Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t terrorists, they’re, um… Freedom fighters, I think… no, wait! Wait! Like Hamas, Hezbollah is a political party. Of course. They just happen to specialize in, as cowardly, spiritually barren and soulless as they are, inflicting aggressive Islam upon infidels, especially innocent women and children in stores and on buses.

However, the Israeli leadership (think Faron, the limp cat in the Peanuts comic strip), such as it is, chose to become French just at that time.

Ehud Olmert withdrew Israeli forces right in the middle of the war, sending a message to the Arabs that Islam had defeated Israel. The message in question comes in a form letter.

In the course of his Presidency, Bill Clinton used the same form letter a few times as a response to terrorist attacks on Americans abroad (a couple of our embassies and the U.S.S. Cole, for example) and, of course, during our troops’ “redeployment” from Somalia (this was back before “redeployment” acquired its new definition: To order total retreat in the face of the enemy; to order surrender or otherwise capitulate, in simpering weasel fashion, without an iota of personal shame, patriotism or pride in either ones’ military or ones’ country.

And the kidnaped servicemen have not been brought home.

Olmert refuses to step down, the single most patriotic thing he can do for Israel. I say, throw the bum out, bring back Netaniahu!

NOW!!!!

During this lowest of all periods in the entire chronology of Israel’s existence as a sovereign state (a scant few years ago, Israel wouldn’t even have considered negotiating with terrorists, today they fork over large chunks of the country along with blessings well spiced by the Kiss Of Shame), the international carrion of the left have begun to exploit the weaknesses of Olmert and his crowd by rehashing the false occupation and oppression rhetoric that has long been the mantra of anti-Israel leftism.

I won’t fall over in cardiac arrest over the news that the portsiders at Amnesty International are bellowing their anti-Semitism and pro-terror fanaticism in an Israeli direction using revisionist history as the keystone, but I will point you towards a must-read and creatively presented post on the subject by Angel over at Woman Honor Thyself.

In engaging his full scale Holocaust denial campaign (even to the extent of having held his global conference on the subject earlier this week), the Iranian president is embacing a multifaceted and highly effective strategy that demonstrates he is, indeed, no dummy (or perhaps he is, and the leaders of certain western countries are just dumber than he is), according to an on-point analysis by megaperceptive columnist Caroline Glick.

So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?

First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a sixty year silence. Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that proudly parades its links to Iran.

The German fascist party NPD’s followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of since the Nazi era. “Jew” has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in use in Germany today.

Iran’s adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad wrote, “The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the Middle East.”

of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left by presenting Israel’s existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran’s Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, “If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt.”

In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry out, wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally.
Indeed, even if the Left doesn’t buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with Iran’s conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, “If during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis’ crimes?”

Truncating,

Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special Holocaust condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust denying conference.

over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran. Merkel’s government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about $5 billion.
Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran’s ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.

The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel’s refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel’s Prime Minister on Tuesday.

Yeah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that completely clueless waste of skin who is as much a threat to the future of Israel as is the Iranian President.

Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir for his opposition to the “nuclearlization of Iran” which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel’s statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran’s Holocaust denial strategy.

Read the entire OpEd here.

So I’m just sort of kicking back at 0400 hours, playing with my new Firefox download — I haven’t yet(after what, 10 months?) figured out how to adjust my blog clock to the east coast, so the time of this post will appear as a zillion hours or so earlier.

I have my MusicMatch library running some Bangles through my great Logitech speakers, stuff like September Gurls and my all time favorite song by that awesome group, Return Post.

I’m thinking about the present situation in Israel — the Hamas rejects and Fatah squaring off to blow each other away, both sides arming up. Okay, so this isn’t as unusual among Arab Muslims as it might be among normal, 21st Century human beings — we discuss, they destroy. Western diplomacy consists mostly of a bunch of over-educated assholes sitting around a table engaged in two-faced, multisyllabic dialogue, but at least they usually come to some sort of agreement that preserves the peace. Arabic diplomacy is just a bit different: It usually means a lot of explosions and hot lead flying in many directions, and lots of people “expiring”. The diplomats that most effectively get their points across are those that kill the most diplomats on the opposite side of whatever disagreement happens to be on the table are considered the best diplomats, even though they, personally, don’t have to wax anybody.

The flotsam that lives to butcher innocent women and children are the true warriors of Islam.

The very idea that the Bush Administration wants these people to have a sovereign state is beyond me, but GWB is the President, so I suppose he must know what he’s doing. Excuse me, I have to go to the head….

I think I’ll let a great blog I recently discovered and blogrolled called Morning Coffee give us an update.

Meanwhile, the combatively challenged Prime Minister Olmert has agreed to bring a “hardliner” onto his team in order to avoid a slide into ruin for his own ill conceived Kadima party, one Avigdor Lieberman, and thank G-d for him, and his Israel Beiteinu Party. Lieberman’s own point of view as to how to get things done is fractionally different than the politically correct Ehud Olmert’s, maybe a mere 180 degrees, at most. Not too much. Did I say “thank G-d for him”?

My own model scenario would be for Fatah and Hamas to kill each other off in the civil war that seems to be brewing between the two corrupt terrorist factions that are the sum total of the so-called “Palestinian” entity, leaving a few necessarily reasonable Arabs who might be willing to assimillate themselves into the Israeli population and allow the Jewish State to get on with living in peace and prosperity, but that’s probably too much to hope for….